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Thursday, March 3, 2011

MIKE HUCKABEE: LIAR

UPDATE BELOW

MIKE HUCKABEE, no matter how many times you repeat your fatuous explanation about "misspeaking" during a radio interview where you claimed that President Obama was raised in Kenya by his father and grandfather, which shaped his world view, and as a consequence of that Kenyan upbringing Mr. Obama came to detest British colonialism and his view of the Brits are different from other Americans' view--no matter how many times you try to explain it away, the facts stubbornly get in the way.

[NOTE TO HUCKABEE: Our Founding Fathers were ANTI-BRITISH COLONIALISM. Maybe you were absent from school the day they taught that in your American history class?]

Here is what Huckabee said in answer to the radio jock's question about the "birth certificate":

"I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American....if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."

Huckabee's spokesperson tried to clear things up."Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in "Kenya." The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia.So, then, what about all that stuff about the British and Kenya and Obama's father and grandfather? And the Mau Mau Revolution? None of that has anything to do with Indonesia."

"Additional remarks Huckabee made on a different radio show today [3/2/11] clearly demonstrate that pernicious attacks on Obama's very Americanism is the objective. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas. And I just do think that there is - again, I am not saying he's not a citizen, I've never said that, I've said the opposite. I've never said he's a Muslim .... I wish [reporters] would ask, though, does this president have a different worldview than any other president in the history of the United States."

So Huckabee suggests that because Mr. Obama spent 4 years of his life [ages 6 to 10] in Indonesia where madrassas exist, Obama somehow has a different world view? Mr. Obama's school in Indonesia was NOT a madrassa, even if there were madrassas in that country. Huckabee, in this insidious "explanation," continues to frame Mr. Obama as "other."

And we understand that dog whistle, and what it signals to his base.

I have an opinion too, Mike Huckabee, and it is that you are a dishonest man who would bear false witness against the president of the United States in order to strengthen your support with racist elements in your base.

I have another opinion: You'll never be president.

But we have to think about this: Mike Huckabee grew up in a part of this country that allowed the murder of African-Americans by Klansmen because of the color of their skin. I think we have more to question and worry about HUCKABEE'S CHILDHOOD and its influence on HIM than we do Mr. Obama's childhood, growing up with his grandparents in Hawaii.

UPDATE:FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN'S THE DAILY DISH: "Huckabee might be interested to know that Indonesia boasts over 17 million registered scouts, according to the world scouting movement [pdf], compared to the roughly 7.5 million in the US. Even Kenya has nearly half a million.

Of course, this is to take Huckabee literally. What he clearly meant to say is that someone called Barack Obama is not a real American. He's Palin without the figure."

Here is Huckabee's complaint yesterday to another radio jock about the media's take on his "misspeaking:"

Fischer: Well Governor, what got lost in all the shuffle was the legitimate point that you were making which is that we may have a president who has some fundamentally anti-American ideas that may be rooted in a childhood where he had a father who was virulently anti-colonial, hated the British – might have something to do with the President returning the bust of Winston Churchill back to England. You know, I was struck by the fact that when he made his tour to Indonesia, he made a point of going to an Indonesian memorial that celebrated the victory of Indonesians over British troops – again, part of that anti-colonial thing. And so I’d like you to comment on that; you seem to think that there is some validity to the fact that there may be some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president.

Huckabee: Well, that’s exactly the point that I make in the book and I don’t know why these reporters – maybe they can’t read, I guess that’s part of it because it’s clearly spelled out and I’m quoting a British newspaper who really were expressing the outrage of the Brits over that bust being returned and the point was that they felt like that due to Obama’s father and grandfather it could be that his version and view of the Mau Mau Revolution was very different than most of the people who perhaps would grow up in the United States. And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.

Huckabee is either stupid or horrible ill informed. It is a well-known fact that Mr. Obama was not under any influence from his father, since his father abandoned him when he was a toddler, and Mr. Obama met him only once, at the age of 10.

Re: The Winston Churchill bust. Both Huckabee and Fischer got that all wrong as well. Mr. Obama removed the bust Churchill from the Oval Office, and put it in another room in the White House.

He replaced the Churchill bust with a bust of one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln. An American.

Imagine if the opposite happened: that Mr. Obama had removed a bust of an American president and replaced it in the Oval Office with a bust of a European leader.

No matter what this man does, the far right is against it. Even to the point of not liked what he chooses to decorate the Oval Office and even when he chooses an American president over a European Prime Minister.

Total Obama Derangement Syndrome.

And IMHO, its basis is in Mr. Obama's race.

No other president in the history of this country has ever had his citizenship doubted by over half of the opposing party.

Its all because Barack Obama is BLACK and this whole "birther" crap is just away to express the racism that is alive and well on the right...this "birther" crap is just code!

So, the folks that believed that we invaded Iraq to give the middle east a little democracy and free those poor Iraqi's from a dictator are all up in arms because they want to believe that Obama is "anti colonial" and hates the British (code for WHITE PEOPLE)oh and "anti colonial" is just a code for slavery.

They are mad because Obama went to a shrine that celebrates Indonesian independence....

Its funny the British (and the Dutch for those who know better) didn't get all worked up over the "slap in the face"

Then the whole thing about "the Mau Mau Revolution" like 99% of the folks on the right ever heard of it....

if that be your definition, shaw, then i'd say that your definition was an ideological definition rather than historical one.

i've taken American history in grade school, high school and in college as well as spending time researching the issues on my own and none of them would ever lead me to the conclusion you have come to.

in fact, in every one of my studies there was never a desire on the part of the founding fathers to separate from the British empire.

in fact based upon the mindset of the people in those days it would have been considered as morally wrong to revolt against the king except under certain circumstances.

and the Declaration of Independence spelled out the justifications that permitted such a revolt.

secession was a solution of last resort as a result of a failure to come to a negotiated agreement of protests of the colonies not because they were anti-colonialists.

so, based on your idea of the meaning of lying i can only say that you are bearing false witness just to strengthen your base of followers also

We declared our independance from the British, then we fought something called the American Revolutionary War...

After the war, considering that Britian was a dominant power we maintained a relationship with Britian, that has grown very strong....

In the case of Kenya...they are still part of the British Commonwealth...

Obivously, "anti-colonialism" has nothing to do with being "anti-british...

No study of history would ever allow you to conclude that Obama is "anti colonial" or "anti british" and no study of history would ever validate the lies that Huckabee, knowing full well he was lying, told to feed one segment of the right so that he could earn his creds with the bunch...

Griper, British anti-colonialism isn't the only claim against Obama that Huckabee made.

You did not address the fact that Huckabee erroneously claimed that Mr. Obama grew up in Kenya under the influence of his father and grandfather. A lie. And Huckabee's insinuations about madrassas in Indonesia where Obama spent all of 4 years of his life.

I submit that Mr. Huckabee had far more anti-American influence on him during his childhood because he grew up in a culture that condoned the murder of American citizens because of the color of their skin. Mr. Obama grew up in a culture that accepted everyone without regard to the color of their skin.

Huckabee has it all backwards, and he's a racist pandering to his racist base.

Griper, we fought a war against a colonial power, if that isn't anti-colonialism, then what is?

"The opposite of Colonialism is self-determination.

Colonialism is a policy by which a nation maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies. It’s a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. The purposes of colonialism included economic exploitation of the colony's natural resources, creation of new markets for the colonizer, and extension of the colonizer's way of life beyond its national borders.

John F. Kennedy gave an anti-colonialism speech addressing the United Nations in 1961. In it, he said “But colonialism in its harshest forms is not only the exploitation of new nations by old, of dark skins by light, or the subjugation of the poor by the rich. My Nation was once a colony, and we know what colonialism means; the exploitation and subjugation of the weak by the powerful, of the many by the few, of the governed who have given no consent to be governed, whatever their continent, their class, their color."

Hamengkubuwono IX, the Sultan of Yogyakarta, was a major figure in the Indonesian independence movement and a major supporter of the Boy Scouts. (There are scouts on the banknote designed in his honor.) So maybe Obama was a scout in Indonesia and that's where he got his anti-imperialist ideas from.

Another writes:

My son is a Cub Scout. He and my husband recently went on a camping trip to a nearby desert. Guess what? There was an entire pack (Cub Scout lingo for troop) of Muslim boys who recited, along with everybody else, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Cub Scout promise, which goes as follows:

I promise to do my best/To do my duty to God/And my country/To help other people, and/To obey the law of the Pack.

"...an even bigger fiction is the one Huckabee tells about the violent felon Maurice Clemmons. Here was Huckabee last month, at an informal gathering of reporters in Washington, after being asked about having granted Clemmons’s plea for early release:

“There was a kid who was 16 years old, he committed a burglary, he was aggravated, but not armed. And for that he got 108 years,” Huckabee said. “One-hundred-and-eight years.”

Sounds awful. Only in Arkansas would they put a black teenager away for 108 years for a single burglary. Except it’s not true, as a routine check of the record, or a look at the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories about Clemmons in The Seattle Times would show.

Clemmons was facing eight felony charges at the peak of a crime spree, not one. He was 17. During a reign of terror, he broke into the home of a cop, stole guns, assaulted and robbed a woman, and broke into the home of state trooper.

In prison, he committed a half-dozen assaults, harassed guards and had sex with inmates as part of a pattern of preying on fellow convicts.

Despite his bad behavior, he would have been eligible for parole after serving 18 years, not 108, The Seattle Times reported. But he got out early, serving 11 years, because Huckabee fell for the oldest con ruse in the book.

While saying he was under “the watchful eyes of the Lord,” Clemmons assaulted two inmates. “God bless you,” Clemmons wrote Huckabee, a Baptist minister, in his plea for mercy. “It is so prayed!”

In that same plea, he claimed to be a model prisoner. In fact, he’d been disciplined 29 times. Had Huckabee checked with prosecutors, prison guards or victims, he would have found grave concerns about letting Clemmons loose on the community. The prison system risk assessment categorized him as “most likely to return to violence.”

And he did, sadly, in late 2009, murdering four officers who sat drinking their morning coffee. Clemmons was later killed during a massive manhunt.

During more than 10 years as governor, Huckabee granted twice as many requests for clemency as his predecessors had over 17 years. Some of the most hardened convicts played the religion card, and went on to further violence.

The pattern here raises two major concerns. He constructs alternative views: a convict is saved by Jesus, instead of using Jesus to get out of jail, or, Obama is a bad president because he’s not really an American.

In one of his lame attempts to explain the Obama comments, Huckabee only added to the character assassination. He said, “Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.” In other words, Obama may not be Kenyan, but he’s probably Muslim! (Note to Huckabee: Hawaii has both Boy Scouts and Rotary Clubs.)

The second question is about judgment, always the most crucial thing to consider in a person who wants to be president. If Huckabee can’t see past a crude convict ploy to his heart, how can he judge the North Koreans?

Huckabee makes a very good living from his employer at Fox News, and from more than a half-dozen books about values. One of the books is called “Character Makes a Difference,” and another “Do the Right Thing.”

again, I am not saying he's not a citizen, I've never said that, I've said the opposite. I've never said he's a Muslim

I'm not saying Huckabee is a racist or a theocrat. Heaven forbid I should say such a thing. I'm not saying that as Governor he knowingly unleashed a cop-killer on the country. I would never say anything like that. I don't know why I brought it up.

Although I don't know if Huckabee is a racist, he has shown himself to be a panderer of the worst kind.

The whole "different worldview" accusation bothers me on another level. Many on the right have developed this "Us against them" attitude and if you don't share their worldview, you are un-American. If they were capable of nuanced thinking, they'd realize that having a different worldview doesn't automatically equal anti-Americanism.